


I Want To Taste Me On Your Fingers

by blessedharlot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, Fellatio, Healing Sex, Magic, Nature, PIV, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Smut, enhanced powers - Natasha Romanov, enhanced powers - Sam Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-13 09:07:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11181528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedharlot/pseuds/blessedharlot
Summary: One moment of suspended beauty passes -- one pause between an inhale and an exhale.And then parched thirst kisses weary hunger.Nimble fingers unfasten all my clothes while my hands explore him. Both of us suddenly desperate to touch deeply, we grope and pull. Bare skin presses tightly against bare skin, and I feel both of us push off the end of the pier and let the water and pond lilies catch us.-=-=-=-Immediately after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Nat looks to her deep connection to the forest to heal from betrayal. She bumps into Sam, who leans on the air to find his own feet again. They decide to help each other recover together.





	I Want To Taste Me On Your Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Art by [pathulu](https://pathulu.tumblr.com/)  
> Story by blessedharlot
> 
> It was so much fun being inspired by this amazing artwork!
> 
> This collaboration is a part of the Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2017.

 

Clint is fond of saying about me, “Nat’s life is so portable, she might as well be a Sony Walkman.” I say Clint needs to get out more.

But the point he’s commenting badly on… it still stands. 

I’ve never really had a home.

It seems my childhood was brutal by most standards. Any blood family of mine that ever existed had withered away by the time I was born. The people that found me kept me in dark, distant cellars and crumbling, anonymous buildings. Their educational style was as much storage as it was training - girls’ spirits split and stacked like cordwood ready to be used. They hid us far away at the last outposts before travelers hit wilderness. They kept their secrets - secrets like me - in the spaces between habitable and uninhabitable terrain. I was raised on the edge of hunger, the edge of raw destruction.  Out there, they dessicated us and grafted cold, brutal stock into us. Filled us up with deception and cunning.

They did all that... not quite knowing what they were doing. What they were growing. Not knowing what they nurtured within us, in keeping us so close to the living, pulsing chaos of the wilderness.

I shouldn’t have survived. But I did. I learned their lessons. Like any unwanted weed, I pulled my sustenance as a child from any resource I had - from brick and air, dust and trampling. As an adult, I have the molecular memory of how to suck in nutrients from steel and neoprene and fist cracking bone.

But here’s the thing. I also learned lessons from something much bigger than those who raised and used me. 

I also learned from the bold hungry forest around us. From trunk and branch and rumbling wilderness. Often cold, often terrifying, always ready to kill, the world of green life always bit deep, like wolves.  I respected its cold, and its primal morality. And it responded by letting me root myself into it. 

I survived what I did by heeding that deep call of dark green. Hardened off early, I now manufacture resilience that stains my skin like chlorophyll. I survive. I survive by having no permanent roots, coating the raw wounds with callouses and growing inward. I never had much to call home. But I am marked by the trees and vines and soil as much as any other wound scars I have. Like forest, like green, I am everywhere. And nowhere in particular. I survive on air and sunlight, and on soil. Any soil I find.

If I have my feet on the ground, I can keep going.

So here I am, one more time.. trying to get my feet back on the ground. Tending to another bad blow.  A slice deep into my green wood. Another betrayal. 

This time… I was foolish. I never should have tried to find a home in another man-made thing again. I embraced yet another organization - S.H.I.E.L.D. - this one seemingly built for protection and care. Nick convinced me I could find a home there. It had the face of righteousness. But it had the hands of evil.

I thought I had finally gone straight. And in believing so, I betrayed myself.

So. For today - and for a while - I have a cabin. On the edge of chaotic living green. Acres of vibrant wood surround me in most directions. To one side of the cabin, there is a lake. I’m isolated here. Away from others. Only a thin road up a dangerous ridge tethers me to the rest of the world.

I find roots in a place like this that I don’t find anywhere else.

Here I can rest. I can green up. I can find what I’ve lost, or find the way to scar over. It’s time to dig deep and reach for something, I think. I don’t do such digging often. I’m not really the introspective type. But I need… something. I don’t know what.

Until I figure it out, I have ideas. And the first idea is gathering some supplies that I might need. 

These supplies will be different from the ones I brought to fill the pantry. My food needs are simple in situations like this… I’m not picky, and I can’t be bothered to cook much. I also have the clothes and weapons I need already.

No, these supplies will be different. Less practical. More instinctual.

It’s still dark. After putting something very light and simple in my stomach - some coffee and breakfast pastry - I am eager to go climbing through the edge of the close forest. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a morning person. I most assuredly am not. But early morning is the best time to reach what I need in these woods. The time for this work is just before dawn, the in between time. Nourishing darkness still lingers on the leaves, but the soft light wafting in begins to stir up the bolder scents.  The cabin’s stores have prepared hand torches and fuel. But I’m not that romantic, and I don’t plan to travel far enough into the woods to require flame as a weapon. I thought a soft flashlight beam might fit the mood better - mine and the forest’s.

Though I can’t see them well now, I know as I stand at the back door that the lake is to my left, near a rocky entrance to woods that thicken quickly with tangled, fallen limbs and underbrush. The lake has a small, short, wooden pier. To the right, soft grass meets a gentler smattering of trees before the deeper thrumming forest begins properly.

I limn the edge of the trees to the right, slowly and quietly, and breathe in the scents here. The forest feels like a drowsy lover nearby, warm heartbeat rustling in the delicious, murky dark.

My feet find their way around tree roots without my conscious thought. I touch every trunk that I pass, with a full palm and outstretched fingers. They hum a little greeting, at first.

I continue, and deeper communication begins between us.

I’ve never told anybody about this. It doesn’t give me an edge in fighting, or a way to get into someone’s head. It’s no one else’s business. But yes, there is indeed a sentience in these woods - in any woods. There’s a mind of some kind. It stretches its fingers into any green growing thing, really. Its tendrils curl into anywhere it’s invited, and into some places it’s not.

And we talk, that presence and I. With some regularity.

It is not a single voice. But it’s not quite a chorus either. It’s something in-between. It is a tapestry of everything that has ever lived and grown green and black and brown in the earth. 

And I’m not a part of it, not really. But we both know something about wildness, and chaos. And we know the deep cold that changes who you are. 

I walk, and I feel my consciousness slip slowly down, and inward… reaching through my hips and my gut. That seat of instinct. I feel my skin come alive and alert with new senses. It’s a lot like the heat of a battle; it’s only the intention that’s different. To connect instead of to conquer.

The Voice rumbles through me, more and more resonant as I stay here, and as I stay receptive. Unknown calls to unknown. 

It worries, fearful of something. It’s raw in the same way I am right now. I don’t know why, or how, but it’s been betrayed as well. I reassure it, and I offer it any protection I am capable of. And I make a mental note to ask Pepper to investigate the legal status of this land. 

I thank it, for its presence and its comfort. I let some of my own meager energy seep out of me into the green all around. Some exchange of value.

And it offers something in return. It cradles me… it feels my wound instinctively, and offers to bleed out some of the poison. I stop walking and sit, my back against a firm wide trunk, just feeling something thrum through my body.

Something pricks unexpectedly on the edge of my consciousness… some distraction. I decide at first that it’s simply some ambivalence about healing from the pain. I must admit to some skill at self-sabotage. So I hush the distraction and try to focus more intently.

There’s a few different items I’m considering for harvest. Intoxicants. Relaxants and cathartics. A great many compounds that cause system failure at one dose provide health benefits at far lower doses -- so my training in poisons frequently has medicinal applications. 

I’m certain there will be bright minty herbs waiting for me, out closer to the lake. I’ll want some of that. But before that… there are ropey vines here that will make fennel-like teas that I won’t find anywhere else. There’s tall lemon-sour grass that will lend a unique lightness to my baths. There are fragrant bushes that can scent my bedroom and there’s bark that will shape my dreams for the better.

And there are, specifically, crocuses. They make me smile. No medicinal value to me, beyond being my favorite flower. The wild-grown crocuses who greet me in random woodlands may be my favorite kind of crocus. I marvel at them, each softly glowing in the growing predawn haze.

I feel roots here that I don’t feel in any other kind of setting.

And yet. Still. There’s something that lingers on the edge of my consciousness. If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone was nearby. I’ve got no reason to think so, no reason but this intuition. 

Perhaps I should start listening to it.

I walk back toward the cabin and I prepare to meet another person. And here’s another feeling with no source I can discern -- I feel that if someone is here, they don’t intend to be here. It’s accidental. There’s a sliver of something in me… the oddest notion that I might possibly frighten them or catch them unawares. I tread carefully to spare this still-hypothetical person a shock, feeling a little bit absurd as I do so.

As I close the back door, I hear a knock from the front of the cabin. 

Well, then.

I’m rarely so lacking in guesses and hunches as I am right now. I have no idea who it could be or what they might want. None of my friends know I’m here. 

I have only this small, curious calm inside me. A sense of recognition. It’s as though this knock is some part of why I’m here. 

I place my partial harvest and my flashlight and cutting tools on the kitchen table, and I head for the front door... unprepared for who might await me as I open it.

I unlatch the door, it swings wide and...

“Sam!”

Sam Wilson stands in front of me, in jeans and a dusty jacket, with a large pack. He is unharmed, but obviously tired. His lips are poised to say something to the stranger he expected. But upon seeing me, his mouth curls into a genuine, surprised and relieved smile. 

“Hello, stranger,” he says in a warm, wan voice.

Despite the strange interruption, I find a smile on my face too. I’ve not met many people in this world who are as kind as Sam.

“What’s going on?” I ask, strangely thunderstruck.

“Well, I was on my way to…” He runs a hand across his head wearily.  “You know what, the specifics don’t matter now. Just something I thought might be nourishing.”

We stand and look at each other.

“It’s…” he continues. “It would be hard to explain."

I nod, understanding. Even when he’s this tired, his smile reaches his eyes. As the surprise and worry of his predicament wear off, he looks very happy to see me.

He shrugged. "But the universe had other plans for me, it seems."

"Oh!” I comes to my senses. “And I’m... dumbfounded and slow. Please come in off the front stoop." I step aside to show some hospitality.

This feels familiar to me. Why?

He hesitates before coming in, though.

“You sure?” he says. “Everybody I know is *not* trying to kill me, at least not at the moment. I’m not desperate enough to interrupt some important tryst you might be in the middle of right now.”

This is a reversal of our second meeting, I realize. When I was hunted and lost, and I found myself on his porch. Now he’s on mine.

But that’s not why it feels familiar, at least not entirely.

Sam shows fatigue. At a glance, he feels sprained and dry. His spirit - always limber before in my presence - feels rigid and brittle at the edges. 

He’s hurting. 

I keep holding the door open and shake my head, with a smile.  “Come in, Sam.” 

He chuckles and enters.

He lets himself into the living room as I close the door. As I join him, I realize he has all his flying gear with him, along with a second small bag. I won’t pry too much, but I wonder how he was traveling, and why he’s here now.

“Are you injured?” I check.

“No, nothing like that.”

“Is that all you brought?”

“Traveling light.” He looks around. “Are you here alone, then?”

I nod. “Traveling light,” I smile.

His goggles sit atop the stack of gear now sitting on the coffee table. Sam has the wings and goggles he wears to fly gracefully into danger and rescue others. I envy him his guileless drive to help.

I realize in a flash just what the deepest source of my sense of violation is. It meant so much to me that I was finally helping. That my mark on the word was shifting toward care and justice, if only a little.

That got stripped away. I’m not as good as I thought. All the work I did to improve myself is tainted. I thought I had accomplished something, and learned something… 

It turns out, I mostly helped HYDRA with their agendas. I’ve lost whatever footing I had in understanding how to be of some use to others. 

I file that insight away to explore later. And I return to the remarkably handsome man in front of me, with a sigh.

“I have an appointment I have to keep right now. Make yourself at home, Sam,” I say. “Kitchen that way,” I point. 

“I’d love a shower. Wash off the dirt of the road. So to speak.”

“Well the bathroom is that way.” I point in another direction. “But there is a beautiful lake outside. The water was the perfect temperature yesterday, and is very clear.”

He’s clear eyed as I step closer. And there was a subtle shift in the air current around us. Without taking his eyes off me, he reaches down to gather his belongings.

"There's two bedrooms. I'm in the front one," I say.

Then... I decide  it’s not a coincidence that he’s here today.  Sam is the straightforward type, so I offer him my own frankness.

"To be completely honest, you can put your things in whichever room you prefer."

I hadn’t seriously considered pursuing Sam before. But then, I certainly hadn’t ruled anything out. He was extraordinarily trustworthy. And very easy on the eyes. I only surprise myself a little with my offer.

I hold his gaze as he takes my words in. There’s a smile curling the edges of his mouth, but I can’t quite read the content behind it.

His hesitation is sensible. Maybe our paths will cross again, and it could be awkward. Maybe they won’t. I don’t know him well enough to know which is more likely to lead to the choice to sleep with a near-stranger. 

I step away, and gather my cutting tools to head back outside. As I sweep the back door closed I see that he’s standing in the same spot, half-turned toward me. He watches me thoughtfully over his shoulder. As the door closes, I get a glimpse of a bigger smile. 

I walk back into the woods, and I take my time, settling back into the conversation I was having with the branches and bark and bushes. I don’t want to rush any of the processes unfolding right now.

I sit, and I listen. I select and prune and thank.

When I return to the clearing at the lake, I find Sam swimming there. From a distance I watch him leisurely spin and kick. He’s clearly enjoying the weightlessness of the water.

I can tell he’s shirtless. I can’t yet tell how much else he’s chosen to wear.

As I approach the edge of the water, I sit the rest of my harvest and my tools down. I’m certain I have a soft smile on my face now too. Once he sees me, he swims in to a conversational distance. He is still in the water up to his shoulders.

“This place is beautiful,” he marvels. “You rent it?”

“Borrowed from a friend of a friend. It’s peaceful here.”

“Yes it is,” he smiled. “You make your appointment?”

“Well enough,” I offered. “You get the road dirt washed off?”

“Getting there.” He was tired, but his eyes slid over me with hunger, and I could tell he’d been thinking about my proposal.

He reaches toward the ladder at the end of the pier, and disappears behind the wooden frame for an instant. Then his form rises slowly onto the platform, revealing every inch of his wet skin to be bare.

I advance toward him, the soft grass under my bare feet turning to warm wood. Sam is both sleek and tender, powerful and caressable. His delicious lines come from superhuman mid-air acrobatics, and a slice or two of homemade pie. He is made of flesh and air all at once, each shimmering inside the other. 

He brushes water off his arms so gracefully, holding my gaze as I closed the remaining space between us.

I feel my clothes dampen and press against me as our lips touch. Even wet, his embrace is warm. 

One moment of suspended beauty passes -- one pause between an inhale and an exhale. 

And then parched thirst kisses weary hunger. 

Nimble fingers unfasten all my clothes while my hands explore him. Both of us suddenly desperate to touch deeply, we grope and pull. Bare skin presses tightly against bare skin, and I feel both of us push off the end of the pier and let the water and pond lilies catch us.

We effortlessly spin back upright to find air again, but never stop kissing, never stop tangling ourselves with each other. Air and water and flesh swirl. We slowly spin and float and nuzzle.

I realize that an edge of the water is nearly within arm’s reach, and my hunger finds direction. I take Sam into my arms and press him up against the wet tilted earth. When he clutches my hips close to his, I find enough purchase to straddle him and press my mound against his erection. A few more moments of neck kisses, of caresses and soulgazing, and he’s inside me. Water and air dance where we meet. The water runs in eddies around us when I sink onto him, and pours off in rivulets when I rise again. I feel a cool wind across my back as I dig my fingers into the vines behind his head and grind into him.

We make waves fiercely, until we’re both quietly spent, breathing each others’ air.

That was the first time.

I climb off and up. I gather my clothes and my harvest, and it’s my turn to grin over my shoulder at him as I saunter back to the cabin.

I find two towels on the back porch, and take one. When I enter the living room, his belongings are gone. It looks like he chose a bedroom.

 

-=-=-=-=-=-

 

Midday comes, and we sit at the kitchen table, half-clothed. His jeans fit him beautifully, and I figure my black tank top and underwear - while bought for sheer practicality - are also a suitable visual to offer.

We nibble at a tiny feast of our supplies… my cheese and crackers, his mix of nuts. I don’t have much appetite for food.

“You’ve got strange ideas for vacation dining,” Sam says, shaking his head.

I shrug. “I didn’t come for the food.”

“What did you come for?”

I look out the window and I feel the forest tug at me again. “I like trees,” I say coyly.

There’s a swell of energy that encompasses both the trees nearby and my own heart, and I can’t tell which location was the origin of it. I close my eyes to ride it.

I hear Sam say, “I think the trees like you too.”

When I open my eyes again, Sam pulls his own gaze from the window to look at me. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if your espionage skills weren’t enhanced somehow,” he says.

“How do you mean?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Some of us just have unique ways of seeing the world, is all.”

“And how do you see the world?”

“Carefully,” he teases.

“Oh is that so?”

On a mischievous impulse, I stand and stride off, searching for his gear. I find his goggles quick-tied to a strap of his bag - in my bedroom. I return to Sam with the goggles in my hands.

I sit down and hold the goggles at arm’s length and eye level between us. He raises an eyebrow in my direction as I find his own eye through one of the polarized lenses. He is crisp, and tinted slightly red with the increased visibility features of the materials. I drop my arm a bit to look at him with my own eyes, and then I move quickly back and forth between the two views.

I run my fingertips along the gleaming edge of the eyewear, and I think about the great skill that he brings to bear on this gear. Yes, it’s impressive technology. But most couldn’t do what he does with it.

He leans in and looks at me. “Put them on,” he offers playfully.

I wonder why he’s offering. I put the strap around my head but leave the eyepieces on my forehead.

“Go look at your trees with them,” he says.

I eye him with a fun suspicion, and I carry myself to the back porch. For a moment I savor the unfiltered, bright greens of midday light.

Then Sam is behind me, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder. He turns me partway around, tucks my hair behind my ears and lowers the goggles across my eyes.

I turn and look.

There is life and color and detail bursting across every inch of my vision. I feel certain I can see the slight violet tint to the smallest flowers living right off the lake. I suspect I can make out the shape of branches deep into the woods. I would confidently make bets on the number of petals on individual crocuses behind the first copses of trees. I feel as though knowledge that has only lived in my mind’s eye before is leaving a sacred mark on my line of sight.

“What do you see?” he asks.

I’m sure I smile wide, feeling strangely disarmed and unguarded.

He nods toward the woods. I walk that way.

I’m nearly made dizzy by my new ability to count the exact numbers of the blades of grass. I can barely walk; how on earth does Sam fly with this heightened level of visual information? I look toward the lake, and the water glitters in celestial ways.  

I greet the trees, a hand to one trunk. The brown texture is the richest thing I’ve ever seen. I walk further and touch more. It feels like I’m closer than I’ve ever been to them, since getting here.

I turn around to find Sam, and he’s right there, grinning.

I close my eyes and greet that presence that finds me - that spirit that dwells here. I find its edge and I press my own heart against it, like the push and pull of a dance.  I know it will rustle the vines behind me, send them swaying. I open my eyes to watch a subtle surprise light Sam’s face, as the rustling behind me gets his attention. I take a breath and I do it again, whipping them as hard as I dare without harming them.

Again the space around Sam shimmers.. Or maybe it’s Sam himself. The energy he carries with him right now is grounding and earthy. It is the same energy as one of his landings after flight… those landings of his that I slightly covet. His feet suddenly taking control, landing assuredly and solidly as his wings fold up. The instant that encompasses both soaring and walking. He feels right now like that sudden transition from air to earth, but he hasn't been in the air... at least not literally.

Sam’s a counselor, I suddenly remember. He heals through persuasion. I can imagine the moon following Sam’s urgings to phase and tug. I can see in his arm the power of the wind current that moves wherever it will, yet still takes on the weighty responsibility of bringing rain to dry land.

The danger of this shifting, yielding strength is depletion when vulnerable relationships break. If one doesn’t have enough of oneself left to bring into any given state - hero, friend, air or land - well. You’d get dry and brittle and bound up by your own thin bones. Sam has given so much lately, and lost so much. I know he’s gained something back, finding a new allegiance in Steve. But he still hurts now, like me. He feels bare and tangled and caught, flight feathers raw.

Bare and tangled and beautiful.

I pull the goggles up to see him with my own vision again. His eyes are closed as he savors some sensation or another that caresses him here. I can’t help but trace his jawline with my fingertips, and his eyes open again.

Suddenly, I have an impulse that I need to follow. I have a gift to give Sam, if he wants it. 

Our gaze stirs the air between us. I put my hands on his bare chest and I slowly sink to my knees in front of him. In one movement I take my own shirt off and I reach for the button of his waistband. Sam unfastens it, and lets me do the rest of the work to get his clothes out of my way. 

He steps free of his jeans and underwear, and I reach a hand up to his erection. His balls are already firming up again under my palm, and my fingers trace lines across the cock tipping up against his abdomen. I brush my hand up and curl my fingers gently around his shaft, searching for those cues on his face that mean I am where I am supposed to be.

One stroke, and another, seem to reach far enough to relax his jaw and his brow. He watches my face as I watch his, unafraid to show me his delight.

I soon follow my fingers with my tongue, and his breathing gets a warm, round force behind it. I don’t last long before I have my mouth wrapped around his shaft, and he groans in agreement.

He gives me a smile, that delicious smile, the same one he flashed me when we first met. I’m not the type to fall for a smile. But I had hoped from his first one that I’d see more. 

He manages the increasing energy by finally pulling his goggles off of me to stroke my hair. Then he tilts his head back, eyes closed.

I see the sun flashing a dappled light around us, sending patterns of umber and sepia across his face. I know the sunlight is flashing across his closed eyelids. And as I slowly take in his cock, I ask the forest to send that exact rhythm of light and shadow - the perfect rhythms of swallow and pull - that reach the deepest into him,  unlocking what he needs.

Push and pull. Dip and reach. My head bobs on and off his cock slowly. When he begins to tense up, I pull back, savoring that edge of desire that refills the deeper reservoirs. I enjoy exploring every contour, every line and vein of him within tongue’s reach. 

And eventually, I let his width fill the back of my throat for longer and longer stretches, until I swallow his cock… once, and again. Sam’s breath gets more and more ragged and he begins to arch toward a climax as I move faster and faster. This time staccato moans escape his lips.

He struggles to stay on his feet while his orgasm takes him fully, giving him something to soar on as he stands there. Finally, he topples down next to me so fast I have to catch him with both arms to keep him from falling flat. He breathes heavily into my ear for a few moments, nuzzling my neck.  His arms wrap around me and I press my heart against his. I knead his upper back under my hands, where his wings sit. 

When he’s gained some strength back, his arm tilts down between my legs as he finds my face to watch. I reach to move the narrow strip of fabric out of his way, and I feel his fingers fluttering between my folds, already very slick.

When Sam soon pulls his hand away, I almost groan from the loss. When he meets my eye and licks his wet fingers clean, I do actually groan aloud. He dips his hand inside me again, pulls out, and this time teases my lips with the thready fluid. I taste me on his fingers and something pings inside.

In the next instant I am profoundly thankful that we have somehow found - or accidentally created? - a soft grassy spot in all this chaos. Because sweet, gentle Sam rips off my underwear with laser precision, lays his naked self down flat on his stomach,  and presses his face between my legs until I moan, groan, ache, flail and cry. Repeatedly.

Like the tender green that breaks through concrete and stone to find air, to find sun and warmth and breath, I let myself reach for him. He is air, light, breath. He lights me up.

Then we’re done again, for now. He’s come to rest himself lengthwise, on a hip and an elbow, and I lean curled into him. And we savor the light through the branches. Some creature chirps from a nearby tree and another trills in response, from further in the forest.

I look to Sam, as though he might give me a translation or something.

“Tell me about you and birds,” I finally ask.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something there.”

He offers a bit of mock indignation. “I don’t personally know every bird, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“You know what I mean!” I laugh, and keep staring.

He shrugged. “I speak their language. Sort of. They’re friends of mine.”

“All of them?” I tease.

“No.” He gives one emphatic shake of his head. “Some of them are real assholes.”

I laugh again. I don’t mind sounding unguarded right now. “Well you definitely have a connection past what I have with spiders.”

“Hm. But maybe not what you have with trees.” He looks at me, and shrugs again. “I grew up taking care of birds. They’re a lot like people. Find out what makes them tick, give them something they want, and you can have a relationship that’s very fruitful for everybody.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Plus they get to fly,” he said with awe.

“I think they taught you some secrets. About flying.”

Sam smiled at me. Damn, his is a pleasant smile.

That was the second time.

 

 

 

 

-=-=-=-=-=-

 

I’ve brought some vines inside, as we retire inside for the evening. I’ll use them first for their scent and later for other qualities. 

Today, we talk about mostly frivolous things. Cars and music. We touch on his Army life. And we talk about Steve. We don’t bring up Steve’s friend.

Sam’s belongings are indeed in my room. He says he’ll probably leave early tomorrow, and that’s okay. The next leg of his trip is meant to be a family visit. He has more healing to find. More work to do to find his center again. 

We haven’t made any obligations to one another.

But one more time, before we prepare for sleep, we reach for each other, bare-skinned.

I stand on one side of the bed and he on the other. He lifts the simple sheet crumpled on the bed and ripples it in the airspace above. 

Before it lands, I dive underneath. 

He lets it land across me, covering my body. For an instant I’m hiding unseen beneath bedcovers, like a child. And then, I feel him stir on the other side. And his hands find my curves, one by one. The edges of myself that I let bleed into the forest earlier today… they now mold themselves again into shoulders, hips, flanks, thighs, and arms under his fingers.

I relish the soft nest I’m in, and the strength behind his strokes. He winds himself around me piece by piece, until he’s straddling me, the pressure of his hips against mine sending me into writhing pleasure. 

I let myself loosen my head back and relax. Sam I trust.

He reaches above my head and finds the edge of the sheet. He slowly pulls it down and I feel my red hair muss against his palm. 

The sheet drops to reveal his face to me, and our mouths reach for each other. We tangle together deliciously, long enough for the sheet to somehow tug and melt away. And Sam presses and caresses and thrusts. 

He gives me his fingers to suck as his mouth finds one of my breasts. My nails find where his wings sit and I scrabble to let them out of him to spread wide. I wrap my legs around his torso wildly, pulling back on my pressure just before his breath gets too short. He more freely tugs at my hair now. All the while, we push and pump and draw out magic between us, pressing each other into ecstasy again and again, through our one night together, ending our day.

If I’m completely honest, I don’t often lay underneath a partner I don’t know well. But this time, as we explore, I’m often underneath him. Sam, with the air behind him, is in his element. He fills the room. I feel us both bending the space around us, in an exquisite dance of tensing and releasing, of fierceness and softness.

Sam has shapeshifting skills. I’m sure of that now. I sensed that fact when we first met, and I can see the multi-reality in his eyes. Hero and mortal, the human who the wind has decided to trust. 

But there’s nothing mercurial about him. He wouldn’t chance burning a friend like that. It’s not a flitting kind of shapeshifting within Sam. He isn’t capricious, and his essence doesn’t change. He adapts to others, like i do… but in a very different way. He just… brings his whole self. Somehow, he’s big enough to be multitudes.

But even without burning anything away, he’s brought me a fresh start. I hope I’ve given him that too. His eyes make me think so. The trees remind us. In our broken wholeness, we remind each other. We don’t need purging fire or metal weapons to get to our goal, not this time. We feel the earth beneath us, and the air sends a cleansing current through us.

For a little while, we remind each other of our separate ways home.


End file.
